A Thousand White Eyes
by Nagia
Summary: A collection of drabbles, vignettes and assorted oneshots revolving around the Hyuuga clan. [IV. Interlude. Neji, Hidama, and the hole in the floor.] [Possible HiashixHizashi twincest, but otherwise no set pairings.]
1. I: Doors on Doors: Hiashi, Hizashi

**A Thousand White Eyes**

**I: Doors On Doors**

* * *

_I love, I love, I love, she sang short and quick in_

_High thin beaten soprano and he knew the meanings,_

_The high chaser of laughter, the doors on doors_

_And the looking glasses, the room to room hunt,_

_The ends opening into new ends always._

—Carl Sandburg, "Circles of Doors"

* * *

Dimly, he was aware that his brother was actually at his side, but he still felt alone. A hallway of doors before him, and a hallway of doors behind.

The Hyuuga manor, specifically, the halls of the Branch House. But twisted, as things usually were in dreams.

Endless hallway. Just like the dreams he'd had as a child— Hiashi, running from him, fading fast, growing smaller and smaller until he was gone— and he had chased after, doors opening and closing around him.

But there was no Hiashi to chase now.

…that had always been his deepest fear, the nightmare he buried below his heart and did not allow his mind to touch. Hiashi and he had always been together; born without even the minutes that usually separated twins at birth— his mother had told him…

_she was pale, and thin, and everything about her was quiet like the hush of nightfall, like it was never bright day in here, in her sickrooom– but then again he had never known her any other way. She smiled at her sons, a brave trembling of white lips, and Hizashi felt his brother flinch, and grab at his hand. Her smile became a little brighter as she saw that, focusing only on the closeness of her twins and not on how they feared the death that hovered around her._

"So close together," she whispered, in a voice like a wisp of cloth over a blade. "Always so close. Did you know, Hizashi-chan, Hiashi-chan, my loves, that…"

…that he had been born holding onto his twin's ankle. And he never wanted to be any farther than that.

And now he was; he was so far he couldn't even see his twin. It was a base instinct to activate the Byakugan, but he resisted. The Byakugan was powerless in dreams, and caused eyestrain upon waking.

He reached out, forcing his body to jerk in his sleep. A hand collided with a warm back, and the back jerked as well.

Within moments, his brother was shaking him awake.

There were no offers to talk about it. They were Hyuuga, and twinborn. He would speak as he needed.

He was shivering. Why was he shivering? He was not cold—

—_except inside, and on his brow, where his seal sat like lines of ice on his skin—_

—and he couldn't. Stop. Shivering.

And suddenly he was in his brother's arms, Hiashi holding him so hard that it hurt him and Hizashi wanted that, needed that, needed to be pulled against Hiashi so tight that he couldn't move away, needed to know that Hiashi was using all his strength on Hizashi and _not one bit less_.

He shivered again.

"The same one," Hiashi said, his voice throaty from sleep and almost a groan from the effort of gripping him. It wasn't a question because it didn't need to be. Hiashi knew.

'Yashi ALWAYS knew. To be one of them was to KNOW. Because that was what they did.

"Same damn hallway," said Hizashi when his brother's grip loosened.

"Chasing me."

"No. No you. Gone."

"Not going anywhere."

Hizashi laid his forehead against his brother's shoulder, focusing on Hiashi's warmth and not the chilled feeling of the seal. 'But you are,' he didn't say. 'You're the leader, you're the firstborn, you're going to be clan head.'

'And I won't. I won't be what you are.'

Instead he said, voice muffled, "Yashi, you need to stop stealing the blankets. Gets cold. Prob'ly why I can't sleep."

"I do not steal," his brother informed him, in that stiff-voiced way of his he only used when he was halfway between teasing and serious.

"I can see the blankets clear as you can," Hizashi replied. "Who's got 'em and who doesn't?"

Hiashi made no reply in words. Instead, he reached around behind them and grabbed the blankets, awkwardly cocooning the thick cloth around them.

"Never again." Whether he was talking about camping or blanket theft or nightmares, he didn't know. Probably all three.

"Agreed."

"Liar."

"Half is not theft." He could tell by Hiashi's voice that his twin was smiling.

"That wasn't half."

"It is now."

Hizashi considered sticking his tongue out at his brother. Warm now, and the nightmare fading away in the all-too-real nearness of his twin, the arm he could feel against his skin, the quiet breathing he could hear like the beat of his own heart, he could feel a haze of sleepiness descend on him. They had trained hard that day. He hummed a little, content.

"Fine," he yawned. "And you don't take my half this time, okay?"

Hiashi watched as his younger brother floated off to exhaustion-deep sleep. 'No' he thought, reaching one hand to Hizashi's brow but stopping just before his fingertips would have touched the seal-lines. 'I've taken too much from you already.'

* * *

Co-written with Cyberfwolf. See if you can tell which of us wrote what. 


	2. II: Burn: Hizashi, Hiashi, others

**A Thousand White Eyes**

**II: Burn**

* * *

"That's not your brother, Hiashi."

"Papa, what do you mean, it's Hizashi, see, it's Zashi..."

"Zashi is dead. Hizashi was not _Sealed_. _That one_ is Branch. _That one_ is Sealed."

* * *

_(burn me)_

It hurts and it burns on his forehead now, and it is icy cold when he wakes. The fact that he can't call his father 'father' anymore hurts worse.

* * *

_(burn us)_

Only that's a lie. Hiashi isn't allowed to talk to him anymore, and that crawls down his throat and grits and burns and never goes away, and Hizashi watches, watches, watches his brother and something always feels a little hollow.

* * *

_(burn you)_

"You can change things, right, Hiashi-sama?" The question is carefully placed and Hizashi hates it, almost more than he hates the silence that is his only answer.

* * *

_(burn them)_

Hizashi is not looking for a miracle; there is no cure for this disease. His people are cracked and bleeding and worn raw on the inside; when one of them has a headache it shivers through them all and they fear. He can feel his brother's eyes on him, always watching him, and he would hope, he would hope, but he does not look for miracles anymore.

* * *

_(burn one)_

Hizashi sinks to his knees, his son at his side, pain searing through his head, unable to help but hearing two children whimper, unable to stop himself from remembering the way they both whimpered when he was Sealed, and decides that maybe the girl might be a miracle— or she might be her father.

* * *

_(burn both)_

"I'll go," he tells 'Yashi, not Hiashi-sama but _Yashi_, his brother, his _twin_. He will not die for the head of the Main House, but he is willing to die for Yashi. Maybe, he thinks, a little wry when he sees the pain on his brother's face, maybe this is his miracle.

* * *

_(burn all)_

"They were equal in every way. But born first, born second— that is what decided their fates."

* * *

The conversation between Hiashi and his father comes courtesy of Cyberwolf, used with permission. 


	3. III: It Beats for You: Hiashi, Hizashi

**A Thousand White Eyes**

**III: It Beats For You**

* * *

_(you were always together)_

Their mother tells them that even though Yashi came out first, he came out wrinkled and red and screaming. "You were just _shaking_ with rage," she says to him, threading the long, thick cord of her braid through her hands. "You were so angry to be away from your brother."

One of her hands drops from the braid, settles on Zashi's head. "You, though, you came out smiling and looking for something. You knew you were going to be with your brother."

A slightly bittersweet smile crosses her face. Not that Hiashi or Hizashi quite know the meaning of bittersweet yet. They know only that their mother, their sweet, sorrowful, sad-happy mother, is smiling again.

"Always together," she sighs to them. She is their sickly mother, soft and sweet and strange, and it is she Hizashi will be thinking of when he tells Neji that all Hyuuga, even the Main House, are a little doomed.

It is she Hiashi will think of when he pushes his sweet, sickly, strange daughter to be stronger. Hyuuga Hina, curled up in her futon with a bowl of tea in her hands, with her long braided blue-black hair and her pale skin, is the one he will see when the Cloud-Nin steals into his daughter's room.

"Once, before you were born, your father sat with me, and we saw you, and we counted your every heartbeat. You were both tangled up together..." That smile turns even sadder, even stranger, and Hizashi will never understand the odd weight in his throat when he sees it.

* * *

_(even when you were apart)_

"I'm not supposed to call you 'brother' anymore."

Hiashi's heartbeat speeds up, and he can see in his brother's eyes that he, too fears that thought. They have always been brothers, always been together. It is the one cherished thing they have ever had that nobody could take from them for misbehaviour.

Hiashi very calmly, carefully finishes the stroke for his kanji. "Who says?"

His voice is that calm, collected tone that he only uses when he wants to hit something. Hizashi never quite learned to use that tone; if he wants to hit something, he usually just hauls off and hits something. It'll be HIS job to fix it later, anyway.

"Your father says."

That is the moment Hiashi starts to hate Hyuuga Hirohito. He could maybe forgive his father the Sealing, and maybe forgive him for making Hizashi sleep in Branch quarters--

But to take his brother away _forever_?

Hiashi swirls his brush in ink and begins to write a new character. "Calling me brother doesn't matter."

"Kind of annoying, though. Not to be allowed to."

Hiashi looks at his twin, eyes narrowing. "That's the least of our concerns."

Hizashi falls silent, a rarity.

Hiashi senses his brother's approach, and is not at all surprised when Hizashi tosses a zabuton on the floor and joins him.

"What are you writing?"

"An open letter, of sorts."

Hizashi tilts his head to one side. "Your kanji look all funny. I have to do this just to read 'em. We... were... always..."

"Shut up. My calligraphy is better than yours."

"Maybe, but I'm the pretty one."

"But we're--"

"I'm still prettier."

"What you are is crazier."

Hizashi tosses his hair in a gesture that Hiashi is fairly sure he learned from their distant cousin Hanamori.

* * *

_(do you feel my heart beat?)_

Most Hyuuga walk, within the compound, in a strange series of spirals, loops, or circles. It seems almost random, perhaps inebriated. It is a walk ingrained into Hyuuga from the time they take their first steps. The nature of a nightingale floor is that the flooring nails, like the wings of a grasshopper, rub against a clamp imbedded underneath the mats and produce a chirping sound. The first Hyuuga, in their obsession with circles and roundness and patterns, placed the clamps in a very specific pattern. One misstep not only alerts nearly the entire compound to the intruder's presence, it can let them know where to search with the Byakugan.

Not even those who observe the strange, spiraling walk can know where the pegs are without the aid of the Hyuuga bloodline technique. Each addition to the compound fits within the pattern— eight rooms with no peg immediately within or outside the doors, arranged in a circle. Of course. The result leads their enemies to believe that they safeguard common areas, but not private rooms.

That time-tested system, of sound narrowing sight, is how Hiashi and Hizashi identify the threat. Sound is what first alerted them, but the rush to Hinata's nursery is silent and strange, and Hizashi cannot help but watch the ribbon-like curl of his brother's ponytail makes as he swoops in circles. The spiral-like movements they make carry them quickly to the nursery, but they do not need to enter to see the shinobi who has slid open the girl's window.

Hiashi makes it through first, a fact that irritates Hizashi to no end.

"I see you," Hiashi says to the enemy ninja, but his terrified daughter thinks he speaks to her. Hizashi knows better; he, too, is reminded of their sickly mother in her futon.

The ninja does not even bother to drop his kunai.

"I _see_ you. With my eyes."

The Cloud-nin actually laughs.

Hizashi knows that this is the end. He leans against the doorframe, smirking. "That means you're toast."

Hiashi doesn't waste another second. His open hand strikes the ninja's chest. A burst of chakra, visible to the Byakugan Hizashi called as soon as he heard the peg creak, and the Cloud-nin falls.

Rubbing his forehead a little, as he always does when witnessing death, the younger twin helps his brother carry the body out.

* * *

_(do you feel my heart beat? it beats for you.)_

"You don't have to do this," Hiashi murmurs to the one person he has ever truly loved.

"I kind of do. You'd just find a way to screw it up." Hizashi smirks, looks away. "I never wanted-- I never wanted--"

_I never wanted the one who did this to be anybody but you_, he is trying to say.

"I know." Hiashi rubs his brother's back. "This is going to hurt."

"It always does, brother. It always does."

"Are you ready?"

"Never. Do it anwyay."

"On eight," Hiashi says. At seven, he stops. Chokes. "Love you."

"Love you too. Eight."

Moments later, his twin's body is cold in his arms. Choking, Hiashi unwraps the bandage from his brother's forehead and runs his fingers over the unbelievably smooth, pale skin he has created.

"Mother and Father had a hard time telling us apart, you know, before we were born. Because we tangled so close together. But they counted your every heartbeat."

Hiashi throws back his head, closes his eyes, and pretends that there's no reason to weep.

* * *


	4. IV: Interlude: Neji, Hidama

**A Thousand White Eyes**

**IV: Interlude**

* * *

It was technically Hinata's fault. But as Neji was going to be Hinata-sama's shadow, it fell to him to fix it. If he could, he'd have grumbled that Hinata-sama could clean her own messes. And then he'd have left for training. Tenten had been showing up late and sweaty, and he was fairly sure she had been training with somebody else. 

"First," Hidama murmured to him, "you lift the tatami."

Hidama then proceeded to nearly effortlessly lift a 3-by-1 mat and lean it against the wall. Next, he knelt, and somehow got his fingers under the floor's second layer.

"And then, you— _hguaa_— lift… the… under…floor…ing."

The flooring made groaning sounds nearly as loud as Hidama's, but he eventually managed to pry it up. Doing so created, naturally, a gap between the under-flooring and the base layer, which was where one would find the clamps that rubbed against the under-flooring's nails.

The older man wiped his brow, staring at the ground beneath him. They stood there like that, two Branch House Hyuuga solemnly contemplating either the nature of life or the nature of nightingale floors, for several moments. Neither said anything.

Main House members walked right past them, lines of sight sliding obviously to the floor, then rolling heavenward, even as they continued the spiral-walk that characterised movement in the Hyuuga Compound. Never once did either Hidama or Neji look up from the floor.

"And the rest is up to you."

And then he was gone, leaving Neji to figure out how to fix the floor.

* * *

(more complete than you'd think) 


End file.
